From Morgantown to Matewan, educators and their supporters pledged to “remember in November” the Republican state lawmakers who held out on the raise they demanded this winter during the teacher strike. On Tuesday, they went to the polls to, as some put it, “make them pay in May.”
Carmen Soltesz, a Williamson middle-school social studies teacher, was among those thinking hard about the historic teacher walkout shortly before she cast her vote. A registered independent, she leans conservative, but was planning to pick up the Democratic ballot to support Sen. Joe Manchin. But Soltesz, 37, also recalled the united front of her fellow educators and school service personnel in the halls of the Capitol as they demanded a 5 percent pay raise and a plan to fix their health insurance program.
“I hope that that energy carries into the elections and the people that were those holdouts feel the backlash,” she said.
Their message may have been clear in at least one race: State Sen. Richard Karnes was defeated by Rep. Bill Hamilton, both of Upshur County, in the 11th District GOP primary, according to election results.
A longtime critic of organized labor, Karnes in 2016 called union members opposing what became the state’s right-to-work law “free riders.” During the teacher strike, and even on Tuesday, he trolled those on Twitter calling for his ouster.
Attempts by state Senate Republican lawmakers to block the proposed teacher pay raise helped extend the strike, which stretched to nine days in March. Some of West Virginia’s youngest voters also considered the holdouts — and the politicians who were the teachers’ biggest advocates. One outspoken backer, state Sen. Richard Ojeda, of Logan, appears to have benefited from his support: He earned more than half the votes in the Democratic primary for a U.S. House of Representatives seat in District 3, according to election results.
Ojeda was among those who drew first-time voter, Jillian Music, 18, of Delbarton, to the polls. The Mingo Central High School senior is a registered independent, and she had a personal connection: Her mother is an educator.
“She’s a teacher, and I’m going to be a teacher, so a lot of this stuff was based around everything that happened with the strike and stuff,” she said. “A lot of it was based on how [lawmakers] treated the teachers.”
In Morgantown, Democrat Dave Mebane said his wife, a teacher, sent him to the polls with a list of candidates to vote for.
“I’m really hoping that month-long political fight makes a difference in the fall and that we see some changes in the statehouse in particular,” he said.
Teachers across West Virginia posted pictures of themselves in “55 Strong” T-shirts Tuesday on a Facebook page many used to follow events of the strike. One post noted that the primary fell on Teacher Appreciation Day.
A teacher rebellion that started in the hills of West Virginia spread like a prairie fire to Oklahoma this week and now threatens to reach the desert in Arizona.
In the deep red state of Oklahoma, the Republican-led Legislature approved money for teacher raises and more school funding, even hiking taxes on the vaunted oil and gas industry to do it. Republican Governor Mary Fallin rushed to sign the measures into law Thursday.
Oklahoma teachers were inspired by West Virginia, another red state where a 9-day strike led to 5-percent teacher raises. Oklahoma teachers haven’t had a raise in a decade of Republican control and they won raises of between 15 and 18 percent. Now, teachers in Arizona thronged their GOP-run Capitol this week, demanding a 20 percent teacher pay hike.
“West Virginia woke us up,” Arizona Educators Association President Joe Thomas told a cheering crowd at a protest this week in Phoenix.
In Oklahoma, the tax hikes on cigarettes, fuel and oil and gas production will be enough for raises averaging about $6,100 annually, as well as funding boosts for schools, support personnel and state workers.
Oklahoma ranks 47th in the nation in public school revenue per student, nearly $3,000 below the national average, while its average teacher salary of $45,276 ranks 49th, according to the most recent statistics from the National Education Association.
“A lot of teachers are just tired of the promises,” said Alberto Morejon, a junior high history teacher from Stillwater, Oklahoma, who launched a teacher walkout page on Facebook that quickly reached more than 70,000 followers.
Many GOP-led states are feeling the pushback after years of tax cuts that have slashed funding for core government services such as public schools, said Lily Garcia, president of the teachers union NEA, .
“It has been an unmitigated disaster, and it’s now coming home to roost on all those folks who blindly cut taxes, not caring how that was going to impact communities,” said Garcia.
The reversal on tax cuts in Oklahoma was particularly stunning, because lawmakers there included a hike on the normally sacrosanct energy industry, increasing the production tax on oil and natural gas from 2 percent to 5 percent. In the Legislature, where lawmakers needed a three-fourth’s majority in both bodies to pass a new tax, the House voted even as billionaire oil baron Harold Hamm, the chairman and CEO of Continental Resources, glared at them from the gallery.
Fallin, who in 2014 signed into law tax cuts on both income and energy production, signed the measures quickly with a hope of averting statewide school closures. Earlier, she praised bipartisan support of the package and said she hopes the teacher walkouts scheduled to start on Monday will instead become a one-day rally for education.
“That’ll be up to the teachers, but I hope that they can come up here, say ‘thank you’ on Monday and go back to the classrooms,” Fallin said.
In both Arizona and Oklahoma, teachers are mulling whether the current offer from the Legislature is enough to avert a work stoppage. The union in Oklahoma was demanding $75 million in new funding for education, and is expected to get $50 million under the plan.
While some Oklahoma school administrators and board members are giddy over the infusion of new cash, many rank-and-file teachers are demanding that all of their needs are met before they agree to stop a walkout.
“They need to fund our schools better, and until that happens, we’re going to walk out,” said Adrien Gates, an elementary school teacher in Norman. “We need to take this all the way. Otherwise, we’re settling.”
Associated Press reporter Melissa Daniels contributed to this report from Phoenix.
The nine-day teachers’ strike in West Virginia made headlines across the country, and some are wondering what the events mean for state’s political landscape. How did a widespread labor strike, a practice normally associated with Democrats, happen in a state that voted so heavily for Donald Trump?
We wanted to take a step back to explore how politics have been changing here over the past generation. West Virginia has been dubbed the heart of Trump Country, but politics here are anything but straightforward.
The strike wasn’t organized solely by Democrats or Republicans, or even union bosses. But some, like Angela Nottingham, a seventh grade social studies teacher from Cabell County, said the action changed how they plan to vote this year. Nottingham said she switched from Independent to Democrat after watching some Senate Republicans fight against the pay increase teachers were demanding.
“I know there are a lot of people out there that are Republican and kind of vote with their party. I think a lot of people are gonna look back at who supported them. And I really do think they, and the people around them, and the people they influence, will vote for the people who helped us out,” Nottingham said.
In 2016, President Trump received nearly 70 percent of votes cast in West Virginia.
Credit Kara Lofton/ WVPB
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woman attending protests at state capitol on March 6 to rally for teacher raises in W.Va.
West Virginia has a Republican governor, and Republicans control both houses of the state Legislature.
And yet, more voters in the state are registered as Democrats than Republicans. In Wyoming County, for example, President Trump won 83 percent of votes, even though more than twice as many voters in this county are registered as Democrats, compared with Republicans.
Could Democrats gain back some ground in the Mountain State?
With the midterm election around the corner, we wanted to get a sense of where we’re headed, so West Virginia Public Broadcasting polled more than 900 teachers and school personnel in an anonymous, online survey. This was not a scientific poll designed by statisticians, but it did give us some interesting insights.
About half of the teachers we surveyed said they identify as Democrats, while nearly 30 percent said they are Republicans. A majority said they voted for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as their first choice for president in 2016.
A majority (36 percent) said they plan to re-elect U.S. Senator Joe Manchin. An overwhelming majority (97 percent) of those who live in the state’s Third Congressional District in southern West Virginia — the seat currently held by U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins, a Republican — said they plan to vote for Richard Ojeda.
Both Ojeda, who’s currently serving in the state Senate, and Manchin are Democrats. That is, West Virginia’s version of a Democrat.
A Different Kind of Democrat
Democrats in West Virginia held the majority in the state Legislature for more than 80 years. More than half of our governors have been Democrats. But, as political science professor Rob Rupp explained, the Democrats in the Mountain State have traditionally been a populist party, pro-labor and socially conservative.
Rupp, a professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, posited that three are three political parties in America: Republican, Democrat and West Virginia Democrat.
“And by that I mean you have kind of a hybrid party, a big tent where conservatives, moderates and liberals all joined,” unique to West Virginia.
Rupp has spent most of his career studying what he called “West Virginia’s slow motion realignment towards the red” in this state, and he said that shift has been happening for a long time. But, he argued, it rose to the surface about 15 years ago. President Bill Clinton was fairly popular here, but Democrats on the national stage since have failed to resonate with voters in this pro-coal state.
“And now [Democrats] are realizing that to many West Virginia voters, the national Democratic Party is out of touch with the state voters,” Rupp said.
This shift didn’t happen overnight. Rupp and other political scientists said one reason for the change is the declining power of unions. Labor has had a strong influence on politics here since the 1930s, and labor unions have typically sided with Democrats.
But in West Virginia, Democrats are far more conservative than the national party: They’re pro-coal, and they usually side with conservatives on social issues, like gay rights, abortion and immigration.
Rupp said now we’re seeing the breakup of that hybrid, West Virginia-style Democrat, a change that could have national implications. West Virginia may be a bellwether for rural America, and for the national Democratic party.
“And now with the loss of power was seeing a struggle between, should the Democratic Party turn left or should it turn right, now that it suddenly finds himself in minority.”
But with the recent teachers’ strike, some people are wondering if the Democrats, could stand a chance of regaining power in West Virginia. And what kind of Democrats could get elected? Ones that lean progressive? Or will they need to look more like the West Virginia Democrats of the past?
One example of the traditional-style West Virginia Democrat is state Senator Richard Ojeda. He’s running for Congress in southern West Virginia and he says he voted for Trump, but he’s been disappointed by the President’s performance. He strongly supports labor unions, and was one of the teachers’ loudest supporters during the recent strike.
But if Democrats like Ojeda want to take back power in West Virginia and across Appalachia, they’ll have to figure out one big question: how to bring back jobs to coal country.
Former coal miner Nick Mullins, who blogs at The Thoughtful Coal Miner, said liberals haven’t done enough during the past decade to appeal to working class voters in Appalachia.
“To be frank and honest [Democrats] need to come off of their moral high horses and come back down to the level of the working class,” said Mullins, a registered Independent from southwest Virginia, who said he didn’t vote in the November 2016 election.
“The working class needs help. We’re facing longer hours or stagnant wages. People aren’t enjoying life right now because they’re having to work so hard and long to just have a little bit of happiness in their lives.”
Brad McElhinny almost missed the first rumblings of the teacher’s strike.
This issue was on almost nobody’s radar screen until MLK Day, when Brad stumbled into West Virginia Education Association president Dale Lee at a teacher’s rally at the Capitol.
“‘Lee said, ‘I know out there, people are talking about a strike’…and my ears perked up and I asked, ‘You said strike, you just don’t drop that work casually, right?’
“And he said, ‘No, we don’t,’ and before you knew it, thousands of teachers in the Capitol…and if you keep a scorecard, pretty well won.”
On this week’s Front Porch podcast, the WV Metronews reporter recounts the teacher’s strike from beginning to end, and we debate its ongoing effects on West Virginia and the nation.
Also, SNAP work requirements, the Gazette-Mail purchase, and Led Zepplin.
Welcome to “The Front Porch,” where we tackle the tough issues facing Appalachia the same way you talk with your friends on the porch.
Hosts include WVPB Executive Director and recovering reporter Scott Finn; economist Jessi Troyan of the free-market Cardinal Institute; and liberal columnist and avid goat herder Rick Wilson, who works for the American Friends Service Committee.
An edited version of “The Front Porch” airs Fridays at 4:50 p.m. on West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s radio network, and the full version is available at wvpublic.org and as a podcast as well.
Share your opinions with us about these issues, and let us know what you’d like us to discuss in the future. Send a tweet to @radiofinn or @wvpublicnews, or e-mail Scott at sfinn @ wvpublic.org
The Front Porch is underwritten by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Charleston Gazette-Mail. Find the latest news, traffic and weather on its CGM App. Download it in your app store, and check out its website: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/
